Two human beings can not live together in peace without laws—many
laws. Everything that either, in consideration of the other’s wish or
welfare, abstains from is inhibited by law, tacit or expressed. If
there were in all the world none but they—if neither had come with any
sense of obligation toward the other, both clean from creation, with
nothing but brains to direct their conduct—every hour would evolve an
understanding, that is to say, a law; every act would suggest one. They
would have to agree not to kill nor harm each other. They must arrange
their work and all their activities to secure the best advantage. These
arrangements, agreements, understandings—what are they but laws? To
live without law is to live alone. Every family is a miniature state
with a complicate system of laws, a supreme authority and subordinate
authorities down to the latest babe. And as he who is loudest in
demanding liberty for himself is sternest in denying it to others,
you may confidently go to the Maison Vaillant, or the Mosthaus, for a
flawless example of the iron hand.
Laws of the state are as faulty and as faultily administered as
those of the family. Most of them have to be speedily and repeatedly
“amended,” many repealed, and of those permitted to stand, the greater
number fall into disuse and are forgotten. Those who have to be
entrusted with the duty of administering them have all the limitations
of intelligence and defects of character by which the rest of us also
are distinguished from the angels. In the wise governor, the just
judge, the honest sheriff or the patient constable we have as rare a
phenomenon as the faultless father. The good God has not given us a
special kind of men upon whom to devolve the duty of seeing to the
observance of the understandings that we call laws. Like all else
that men do, this work is badly done. The best that we can hope for
through all the failures, the injustice, the disheartening damage to
individual rights and interests, is a fairly good general result,
enabling us to walk abroad among our fellows unafraid, to meet even the
tribesmen from another valley without too imminent a peril of braining
and evisceration. Of that small security the anarchist would deprive
us. But without that nothing is of value and we shall be willing to
renounce the anarchist.
Our system of civilization, being the natural outgrowth of our moral
and intellectual natures, is open to criticism and subject to revision.
Our laws, being of human origin, are faulty and their application
is disappointing. Dissent, dissatisfaction, deprecation, proposals
for a better system fortified with better laws more intelligently
administered—these are permissible and should be welcome. The decent
socialist (when he is not carried away by zeal to pool issues with the
anarchist) may have that in him which it does us good to hear. Wrong in
all else, he may be right in showing us wherein we ourselves are wrong.
Anyhow, his desire is amendment, and so long as his paths are peace
he has the right to walk therein, exhorting as he goes. The French
communist who does not preach Petroleum and It Rectified is to be
regarded with more than amusement, more than compassion. There is room
for him and his fad; there are hospitable ears for his boast that Jesus
Christ would have been a communist if there had been communes. They
really “did not know everything down in Judee.” But for the anarchist,
whose aim is not amendment, but destruction—not welfare to the race,
but mischief to a part of it—not happiness for the future, but revenge
for the past—for that animal there should be no close season, for that
savage no reservation. Society has not the right to grant life to
one who denies the right to live. The proponent of reversion to the
_régime_ of lacking noses should lack a nose.
V
Of all the wild asses that roam the plain, the wildest wild ass that
roams the plain is indubitably the one that lifts his voice and heel
against that Socialism known as “public ownership of public utilities,”
on the ground of “principle.” There may be honest, and in some degree
intelligent, opposition on the ground of expediency. Many persons
whom it is a pleasure to respect believe that a government railway,
for example, would be less efficiently managed than the same railway
in private hands, and that political dangers lurk in the proposal so
enormously to increase the number of Federal employees as government
ownership of railways would entail. They think, in other words, that
the policy is inexpedient. It is a duty to reason with them, which,
as a rule, one can do without being insulted. But he who greets the
proposal with a howl of derision as “Socialism!” is not a respectable
opponent. Eyes he has, but he sees not; ears—O, very abundant ears—but
he hears not the still, small voice of history, nor the still smaller
voice of common sense.
Obviously to those who, having eyes, do see, public ownership of
anything is a step in the direction of Socialism, for perfect Socialism
means public ownership of everything. But “principle” has nothing to
do with it. The principle of public ownership is already accepted and
established. It has no visible opponents except in the camp of the
anarchists, and fewer of them are visible there than soap and water
would reveal. Antagonists of the principle of Socialism lost their
fight when the first human government held the dedicatory exercises of
a cave of legislation. Since then the only question about the matter
has been how far the extension of Socialism is expedient. Some would
draw the limiting line at one place, some at another; but only a fool
thinks there can be government without it, or good government without a
great deal of it. (The fact that we have always had a great deal of it,
yet never had good government, affirms nothing that it is worth while
to consider.) The word-worn example of our postal department is only
one of a thousand instances of pure Socialism. If it did not exist,
how bitter an opposition a proposal to establish it would evoke from
adversaries of the Red Rag! The government builds and operates bridges
with general assent; but, as the late General Walker pointed out, it
may under some circumstances be more economical, or better otherwise,
to build and operate a ferry boat, which is a floating bridge. But that
is opposed as rank Socialism.
The truth is that the men of “principle” are a pretty dangerous class,
generally speaking—and they are generally speaking. It is they that
hamper us in every war. It is they who, preventing concentration and
regulation of unabolishable evils, promote their distribution and
liberty. Moral principles are pretty good things—for the young and
those not well grounded in goodness. If one have an impediment in
his thought, or is otherwise unequal to emergencies as they arise,
it is safest to be provided beforehand with something to refer to in
order that a right decision may be made without taking thought. But
spirits of a purer fire prefer to decide each question as it comes up,
and to act upon the merits of the case, unbound and unpledged. With a
quick intelligence, a capable conscience and a habit of doing right
automatically, one has little need to burden one’s mind and memory with
a set of solemn principles formulated by owlish philosophers who do not
happen to know that what is right is merely what, in the long run and
with regard to the greater number of cases, is expedient. Principle
is not always an infallible guide. For illustration, it is not always
expedient—that is, for the good of all concerned—to tell the truth,
to be entirely just or merciful, to pay a debt. I can conceive a case
in which it would be right to assassinate one’s neighbor. Suppose him
to be a desperate scoundrel of a chemist who has devised a means of
setting the atmosphere afire. The man who should go through life on
an inflexible line of principle would border his path with a havoc of
human happiness.
What one may think perfect one may not always think desirable. By
“perfect” one may mean merely complete, and the word was so used in
my reference to Socialism. I am not myself an advocate of “perfect
Socialism,” but as to government ownership of railways, there is
doubtless a good deal to be said on both sides. One argument in its
favor appears decisive; under a system subject to popular control the
law of gravitation would be shorn of its preëminence as a means of
removing personal property from the baggage car.